Smoking at the Zoo

As you may have noticed from my past series of posts, I was treated like an outcast among the air staff at KZZO-FM in Clovis, NM. This was due to a number of reasons, mainly Program Director Crad badmouthing me to anyone and everyone he happened to talk to. Other reasons were that I was going to college to get a degree and, of course, the Asperger thing didn't help things much, either.

But one thing that really set me apart from everybody else was the fact that I didn't smoke cigarettes. I'm surprised that I didn't get lung cancer from those other DJs because they constantly smoked in the studio while they were on the air. AND they would smoke when they were hanging around after their shifts. AND some of the women who worked for us smoked as well. The tobacco industry could have kept afloat just on radio DJs across the country. Keep in mind that we didn't get paid very much, so it was always bewidering to me why the other DJs would shell out so much hard-earned cash to maintain this habit.

I wasn't really bothered by the smoke. I just didn't like how there would be piles of cigarette butts and ashes that were left behind by the previous DJ. Sometimes, they would remember to clean up when they were done, but most of the time, they'd forget. It wasn't uncommon for me to find their tobacco product remains hidden among the equipment and records.

I came in before my midnight shift once and bought a bottle of Coke out of the vending machine. I had mostly finished the soda before I started my show, but I had one swallow left in the bottle. I sat at the control board. The DJ before me stuck around a little bit to chat. I took that last swallow out of the bottle and GASP! I had this horrible taste in my mouth! The other DJ had flicked his ashes in the bottle while I wasn't looking! He said he was sorry, but he didn't do anything to try to make the situation better, like buy me another Coke or something. I had to deal with that ashy taste in my mouth for the next three hours. YUCK!

There were a couple of DJs at KZZO who didn't smoke. Tod wasn't a smoker when he started working at the station. However, he was feeling a little fatigued during one shift and found that someone had left some cigarettes behind. He thought about how good a DJ Dr. D (who smoked) was and thought he'd give it a try that night. He said he felt a real kick and had a lot of energy during his shift. He was hooked! However, he admitted that despite months of smoking, he never felt that same kick again, except for the first thing in the morning.

I remember he was going out of his head one night because he needed a cigarette, but didn't have enough money to get a pack. I didn't have any money to loan him. One of the walls of the station has all the plaques, certificates and awards that have been presented to the station over the years. One of them was a "Our First Dollar" certificate with a real dollar bill in the frame. Tod was very tempted to smash that open and get the dollar out to use it.

Smoking caused other problems as well. When we were the first station in the region to get a CD player. We started noticing that it wouldn't work like it should all the time. It was determined that the equipment breathing in all that smoke was doing damage to it. We also had to clean the CDs every time before putting them in. Still, no one passed any edict forbidding smoking in the studio.

When I started working at KHOW-AM/KSYY-FM in Denver, I didn't notice that much smoking going on. Either everyone didn't need to smoke or there were rules that kept them from doing that in the studios. The same was mostly true when I started working at the newsradio station in San Jose. In fact, it took me five years to realize that the afternoon drive guy there was a smoker. He always went outside when the network news program was on. When I first started there, the top of the hour news took six minutes, but after a few years it got cut to four minutes. I don't think he was very happy with his smoke time getting reduced like that. There was a woman who worked part-time there who smoked. She said the reason she started smoking was so that she could develop a huskier voice that would sound better on the radio.

I'm glad I never gave into the temptation to smoke, and I'm also glad that I never felt the need to discriminate against those who do, even though it appears that most of them didn't return that favor.